the authorities are not at one, even on this point. We only know that he preached by the lakeside, in the villages and in the cities, in Capernaum and in other towns of northern Galilee; and then we know that towards the last of the year he appears at Jerusalem at the great feast, and there becomes complicated with the Jewish authorities and is transferred from their hands to the Roman power, and at last is crucified as a malefactor. This, in brief, is the outline of what is known of the grandest life, perhaps, in all the world.

My purpose now is to suggest to you certain things that Jesus did not attempt to do and then certain things that he did attempt. That is, I wish you to see, in contradistinction from that which has been claimed on his behalf or that which has been said and taught about Jesus,-I wish you to see with clearness and definiteness an outline of what it was that Jesus himself really taught, the things that he attempted and what he accomplished.

I need at the outset to mark off negatively a few things that he did not attempt.

In the first place, he did not attempt to teach or establish any outline scheme of doctrine. You may trace the confessions of faith as far back as you please,—the schemes of salvation. You may trace the great doctrines of Christendom, and you will find that in every instance, almost, they are doctrines of men about Jesus, and not at all the doctrines of Jesus. As I have said over and over again, I believe that, in a certain pre-eminent way that is not true of any other body of religionists, Jesus, his life, his teaching, his inspiration, his fame, the prestige of his name, belong to us. I do not mean at all by this that he held precisely the ideas about God, man, and destiny that we hold. I only mean that the spirit, the temper, the purpose, of his life, away back two thousand years ago, are practically in accord with the spirit, temper, purpose, of our life to-day, and that he is not to be held responsible for the doctrines which councils and priests and popes have thrust upon him,—a burden too heavy for his fair fame to bear. Jesus, then, did not teach, did not attempt

to teach, any scheme or plan of salvation, in the modern sense of that word. He did not teach any system of theology whatsoever. It is very curious, if he came to save the world from the results of the fall, that he says nothing whatever about it. It is very curious, if he came to suffer and die to appease the wrath of God, in order that man might be saved, that he says nothing whatever about it. It is very curious, if he was the second person of the eternal trinity,God manifest in the flesh,- that he says nothing about it. And so you may trace doctrine after doctrine, all those things that have been asserted about Jesus, and you will find that in almost every case he is in no sense whatever responsible for them.

In the next place, he did not attempt to establish any organization called a church, or any other organization among men that was to hold in its exclusive keeping the truth, the love, the mercy, the forgiveness, of God, with power to admit or exclude as it pleases. He said nothing about the organization of any church. He built no fences. He simply cast his truth, as he himself said, like leaven into the great mass of the world's surging, seething life, and left it to permeate that life and take care of itself. He cast his influence, the power of his personality, into the great, freeflowing stream of historic progress, and left it to clear, to permeate, to shape, that stream as it might. He organized no church, he appointed no papacy, no priesthood, no minister, no diaconate, no authority whatsoever that was able to bind or loose in heaven or on earth. He gave no man any keys; and he claimed to give no man any keys. He established no organization that was to be called by his name or any other name.

In the third place, he did not establish any sacraments. The Protestant Church is accustomed to say that there are two sacraments of divine ordination,- baptism and the Lord's Supper. The Catholic Church says there are seven sacraments, baptism, confirmation, the eucharist, penance, extreme unction, holy orders, and matrimony. Of all these,

Jesus did not attempt the institution as a sacrament of any single one. Baptism was earlier than the time of Jesus. Jesus baptized nobody: he simply accepted the rite at the hands of John the Baptist as one of common occurrence, and his disciples adopted it in after times. He made no law concerning it whatsoever. Jesus had no idea of establishing even the Lord's Supper as a permanent institution. He simply said to his disciples, This do as ye sit at supper in remembrance of me. Remember me when you break the bread, and remember me when you drink the cup.

But note one thing bearing on this question of the organization of the church as a permanent power in the world and as bearing on the institution of sacraments as permanent forces in the world. If Jesus be correctly reported, he said that the present order of things was to come to an end inside of twenty-five years, before the people that he was talking to should all have passed away. It is absurd, then, on the face of it and in the presence of an expectation like that, to think of him as supposing that there was any need of organizing a church or instituting any sacraments whatsoever. The present order of things was speedily to come to an end, and a new heaven and a new earth were to take the place of the old order. Meantime, then, he did nothing but proclaim the glad tidings that he had come to bring. So much, then, by way of the negative side, so much as to what Jesus did not attempt.

Let me now call your attention to certain things not altogether new, but new in the force and freshness with which he proclaimed them, new in the fact that the conditions of the world, politically, socially, religiously, morally, at that time were fitted for their introduction as never before. He proclaimed with a power and freshness and adaptation to the conditions of his age certain great principles that, if they may be allowed the name of Christian, are capable of making Christianity a universal and eternal spiritual religion. Mark you, I do not undertake this morning to define Christianity. I only say that, if these things which I regard

as the most important things that Jesus ever taught, may be taken as the essential things, if they may be taken as so essential that the name "Christian" belongs to them, then Christianity is destined to be the world-wide and everlasting religion.

What were these things? First, he attempted to establish in the thought and life of his time what I may call the delocalization of the worship of God. Up to his time, God, or the gods, had been universally worshipped at particular places. Go back among the old barbaric peoples, and you will see that it never occurred to them that they could worship their god anywhere they might happen to be. The God they worshipped manifested himself in some special way, at some special place. At this particular spot he was accustomed to keep tryst with his worshippers. He could be found nowhere else. He could be found here only in accordance with some special form or order of service, and in no other way. If you wished to win his favor, you must go to his sacred seat. Among the Greeks in the early days, the worship of the gods was local. If a man went into a foreign country or beyond the borders of his own land, he was beyond the jurisdiction of his own god. The god as an image must either be carried with him or he must go beyond the limits of its power. When they wished to establish a new city, a new civilization, as according to Virgil's story of Æneas founding the city of Rome after the destruction of the city of Troy, they must take some of the sacred earth itself from the place where the god had been accustomed to abide, and carry it with them. They were supposed thus to transport the god in the process, and this was the only way by which they could take him into a foreign country and establish there their own peculiar religion. The same was substantially true among the Hebrews. You remember the old Bible stories: how, when some of the enemies of the Jews had fought them up in the hills, they said the Hebrew God is the God of the mountains,-if we can decoy the people down into the plain, we can beat them; how the Philistines

captured the ark, and carried it out of the Hebrew camp, and the Hebrews were utterly weak and helpless until they got it back again. These were universal ideas in the ancient world. In that famous talk with the woman of Samaria when she raised the question as to where was the proper place to worship Jehovah, saying, We worship him on this mountain, but you say in Jerusalem is the only place,- of course she expected him to say that, knowing he was a Jew, - what did Jesus say? The hour cometh, yea, now is, when neither in this mountain nor yet in Jerusalem shall men worship the Father. God is Spirit,-the great, ringing, emancipatory word,- God is Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. From that hour, the highest thinkers have known that the universal God dwells not in temples made with hands, but is to be faced, met, by the pure in heart and the spiritual-minded everywhere.

Another great thing Jesus attempted. He attempted to press home upon the world the thought that the one thing of importance was not the outward expression of the religious life, but the condition of the heart that sought expression. Up to this time, almost all over the world, as in the other case, the contrary idea had been held. In Rome or Athens, the question never came up as to the condition of the worshipper's heart. Jupiter cared nothing about the condition of his worshipper's heart. Apollo cared nothing about the state of mind of the man who sought his altar. The ancient gods were not searchers of the secret places of the soul. What they wanted was the outward pomp of worship. A man must follow the prescribed ritual; he must offer the appropriate sacrifice, with the proper words, in the proper way. If he did this, no further questions were asked. This, also, was the popular idea on the part of many of the Hebrews. That is what Jesus charged home on the Pharisees, the Pharisees who thought themselves the most scrupulous and religious people of their time. You pay tithes, he said, of anise and cumin,-you are very scrupulous about